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Date:
2
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25
/2010
Dollars & Sense
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Foreign Investment
Mariah de Forest tells how a company’s foreign-born Hispanic workers can help manufacturers save cash.
Because work is so slow, manufacturing companies are trying mightily to conserve cash. Have they overlooked that the easiest way to do so is to improve the productivity of employees – a growing percentage of whom are foreign-born Hispanics? Bureau of Labor Statistics employment figures show about 15 percent of manufacturing industry workers nationwide are Latino. In many areas of the country, factories have workforces that are almost 100 percent Hispanic, and two-thirds of them are from Mexico.
Increasing the productivity of Latino employees works best when managers have some understanding of Latino culture. Plant productivity often suffers because foreign-born Latino employees are not accustomed to how U.S. managers communicate, and U.S. managers are unaware of the cultural dimensions of managing an ethnically diverse workforce.
Some forward-looking executives ask outside specialists for intensive programs to educate managers on how to overcome the cultural and linguistic barriers that hinder productivity. Others rely on day-long workshops to educate managers about how information about cultural differences can improve workforce efforts and results.
There are four critical areas in which Hispanic employees’ culture – behavior and attitudes – tends to differ from those of Anglo-Americans. Recognizing these cultural distinctions can greatly improve workforce efficiency.
1. Language
Unless management makes an effort to bridge the language gap, Hispanic workers cannot fully contribute ideas and work in sync with the rest of the team. The plant manager of a western Illinois gray iron foundry with a 60 percent Hispanic workforce, complained:
My supervisors don’t even try to communicate with the Spanish-speaking workforce. They do things and say things differently, and they need to adjust to us – they’re here now. The personnel clerk hasn’t got time to come out on the floor to translate all the time.
This outlook is quite common, but it’s short-sighted, contributing to high reject rates and decreased efficiency. If no one has time to translate, production questions become a best-guess scenario. When employees guess wrong, the company loses money. Some simple strategies can help bridge this language gap: Allow workers to translate for each other – identify bilinguals and rely on them; make sure there’s a bilingual clerk at workforce meetings to translate for insurance and pay questions; identify a few key employees to be responsible for machine records and production reports, and teach them the basic English necessary to do these jobs; and finally, promote and train a few bilingual supervisors.
2. No Shouting
Courtesy and respect grease the wheels of social relations in traditional Latino cultures. In a Macon, Ga., assembly plant, the plant manager contended, “It’s normal for managers and supervisors around here to lose their tempers when things go wrong – they do yell a lot and curse.” Although employees of all nationalities want courteous treatment, Mexicans and Central Americans are particularly offended by disrespect. After a surprise plant walkout, the plant manager discovered too late that yelling at foreign-born Latino workers not only de-motivates such employees, it also reaps poor job performance.
3. Styles of supervision
Latino national cultures historically are authoritarian. So while foreign-born Hispanics often accept supervisory authority without question, they are also more sensitive to its abuse. Hard-core supervisors don’t realize that Hispanic workers (as do many others), will balk at cooperating with production goals when they perceive supervisory favoritism and unfairness.
A Connecticut sheet metal plant manager asked, “How can I uncover and correct poor treatment of my employees when they can’t communicate in English?” He learned from an outside specialist that the most efficient approach is simply for every supervisor and lead person – including bilinguals – to receive brief but structured training on how to recognize and combat favoritism and unfair treatment.
Manners, problem solving, and uncovering production problems
An Austin, Texas meatpacker plant manager thought production problems were taken care of because his supervisors hadn’t brought up any complaints by employees. He said, I didn’t realize that Hispanic workers generally don’t complain about mistreatment, work conditions or production needs. I learned that bringing problems or complaints to a supervisor or manager strikes foreign-born Latinos as bad manners.
Another reason foreign-born Hispanic employees are reluctant to complain about work conditions and production needs is because they often figure that management already knows what’s needed and has decided against it. Other ways must be devised to uncover production problems, such as a “diagnostic audit.”
Outside Experts Best Answer
An expert was brought in to an Ohio industrial machinery company to conduct a short-term diagnostic audit – face-to-face interviews with the employees. The audit turned up many production glitches that neither the plant manager nor even the Spanish-speaking supervisors knew about. This is because employees almost invariably speak up far more openly to an outsider than to any member of management, for fear of retribution. The audit turned up, for example, that a hole in the concrete floor caused in-process material to fall off the forklifts and get damaged; the scheduling of parts delivery caused pileups in one department; and two machines needed better maintenance to achieve production goals. Employees believed supervision knew all about these problems, but just “didn’t care” – an unfortunate, but common, workforce misconception.
Diagnostic audits strengthen communication with Hispanic employees. Further, an audit by an outside consultant aimed at uncovering production and quality problems always turns up good suggestions for improving operations – and saving money. Foreign-born Hispanic employees seldom disclose their concerns to managers for fear of reprisals. But after employees observe that there is nothing to fear and they overcome their reticence, a company manager can be trained to take over the audit function.
For plant managers who make efforts to be informed about Hispanic culture and outlook, the payoff is great: higher productivity, lower labor costs, better quality and on-time shipments, less absenteeism and higher employee morale. In the end, listening to employees and using their input saves cash, and builds the bottom line.
Mariah de Forest is Vice President, Imberman and DeForest, Inc., a nationwide consulting firm serving clients since 1944. Email IMBandDEF@aol.com, or call 847-733-0071.
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